COLLONGE-EN-CHAROLLAIS | SAÔNE-ET-LOIRE

Energy renovation of a building / Transformation

of a former school into a community hall

The town used as a communal hall, a prefabricated building installed in the courtyard of the old village school designed by the architect François Dulac in the 19th century. this had been used for several years as an office for the prefabricated building. The town hall had previously renovated the floor of the building to install a communal lodging. Our project therefore consisted in demolishing the prefabricated building and redeveloping the entire ground floor of the old school to install the communal hall. We decided to keep as much as possible the structure of the building and its characteristic layout consisting of a large room with an adjoining covered courtyard to the south. We built two white concrete blocks on either side of the courtyard to install the office and the toilet block.

In the courtyard that unites the two blocks and provides access to the large room, we have installed a slightly recessed glass facade to control the overheating of the glasses and the interior space. Open, it maintains the permeability of the space with the exterior, identical to the original courtyard. Closed, it creates a second room, or an annex to the first, making it a dance space, or a space for children in direct connection with the outside.

The acoustic ceiling in openwork wooden slats extends over the entire space, outside under the porch, and falling on the concrete blocks on either side of the courtyard. The spacing between the douglas blades allowed the installation of the luminaires and the diffusion of the heating and ventilation.

We wanted to preserve the memory of the place, by sandblasting and restoring the stone shear wall and keeping the local brick arcades, characteristic of Dulac buildings made in the region. In the blink of an eye, we built the new porch and the access ramp in brick, this time in anthracite grey, in line with our interior tiling.

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Photographs: © Philippe Billard

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